I'm looking for a simple way to provide a remote machine take over, via the internet.

Why? I have converted my dad's machine to Ubuntu, and I need to support it, but 4hrs drive each way to solve dumb questions is a little OTT.

I've been playing with linux for a while, at the (GUI level). I can follow "ho to's" to get stuff working, but am by no means a command line junky!

I read the latest remote access guides in the magazine, but a short way into the subject I was lost.

I've managed to get local remote access working, but as soon as you put a router and the web in the equation it's way to hard.

My (simple) vision is to have a program on the target machine run which authenticates to a server somewhere with it's IP address etc. Then from my home I run a program which collects the details and routes back to the target - a passwords later and away we go!

Of course this needs to be simple enough that I can talk my dad through loading the software himself, so no command lines - it's got to be idiot proof!

This would encourage me to load linux on more machines, as remote support is way way easier than sitting there with the user "helping"